Your Complete Guide To Walnut (And Walnut Colored) Cabinets
- Corbin Clay
- Mar 27
- 6 min read
While white oak has been king for the last few years (and for good reason!), we're starting to see warmer, medium brown wood tones make their way into the beautiful designer kitchens on Pinterest and Instagram. While walnut is an excellent wood for kitchen and bath cabinets, it can be both very expensive and very inconsistent in coloring and grain.
It's important to distinguish between the color of walnut, the actual walnut wood, and specifically what it is you're wanting (we've seen so many frustrated homeowners struggling with muting white oak's wild grain to get the "white oak look" when, as it turns out, they weren't actually wanting white oak - rather the color of white oak).
Let's jump in...
What is Walnut And Why Is It Good For Cabinets?
Let's start with some basics: walnut is a very dense hardwood found all throughout America. It is an excellent wood for cabinets, but does have a pretty wild grain and a lot of natural color variation.
Likewise, the sap wood of walnut (the part right underneath the bark) is often a bright white/tan tone, while the heartwood is the medium, chocolate tone we're all familiar with.
Pro tip: "Black walnut" and "American walnut" are the same thing, just two names for the same wood.
What Is The Best Finish For Walnut?
Walnut is best finished with just a clear topcoat. Like any clear-only finish, it all starts with the wood selection. Walnut is known for it's beautiful warm, medium-brown hue, accentuated by just a natural finish, no stain. If this is the look you're considering, be sure to chat with your cabinetmaker about ensuring consistent coloring (this is common when we select the wood for your project) and to avoid all sapwood. This is often referred to as "A-1 Select" lumber grading, and is generally very expensive.
Remember all of the discussion about water-based finishes preserving the natural, unfinished tone of white oak, and never to use solvent-based finishes because they turn oak orange? We want to do the exact opposite for walnut.
Water-based finishes are the color of skim milk to begin with, so when applied to wood, they don't change the natural color too much. Walnut, as you can see below, is actually very light when unfinished. When we use an oil-based finish (technically "solvent-based", we do a deeper dive into good cabinet finishes here), the natural beauty of walnut is enhanced and accentuated, transforming the grey, lighter unfinished tone into the deep, chocolate-brown tone we love so much.
While we certainly can stain walnut, it begs the question of why would you? While not always ideal, some walnut-colored stains can control the natural color variation, and some cabinet finishers will even add a little walnut toned dye into their topcoat (this is the "tinted topcoat" or "toning" we talk a lot about) to also create a more even hue without muting the grain. Both of these are fairly advanced techniques, so be sure your cabinetmaker / finisher is familiar and capable of creating the exact look you want (here is how the color matching process works in the world's best cabinet shops).
Will Walnut Turn Orange Over Time?
Short answer is, yes, though nothing significant so long as good, professional-grade finishes are being used. There is a major difference between anything available at a hardware store, and proper cabinet coatings that only highly-trained professionals can buy. The latter finishes have excellent UV-protection to reduce, if not completely eliminate, any long-term discoloration from sun exposure.
Don't Fight Walnut's Natural Grain
As I mentioned above, walnut can have a pretty wild grain and lots of color variation. While some pieces are subtle and consistent, others can have a completely different tone and grain pattern. If this is the look you're wanting, walnut is the only wood on the planet to create this beautiful aesthetic so we say go for it!
If, however, you're just wanting medium, warm-brown, walnut-colored cabinets, any other domestic hardwood can do the trick (often for a lot less, more on that below).
Pro tip: A-1 select hardwood grading says that any knot, blemish, or mineral streak larger than a dime is considered a "defect". Shame, I say. Hardwoods that include all of those "defects" are labeled "rustic" or "knotty". Because this is all the wood too ugly to use for cabinets, it's quite a bit less-expensive than A-1 select and sometimes a good way to save a little money!
What About Rift Sawn Walnut For A More Subtle Grain?
We saw this a lot with white oak: While flat-sawn is "standard", and with oak a very loud and pronounced grain pattern, switching to rift-sawn was a way to slightly reduce the natural grain variation. While rift does, in fact, have a more subtle and consistent grain pattern, it comes with a whole host of other issues (extremely expensive being one of them).
We do see rift-sawn walnut in more modern projects used to achieve a very avant garde aesthetic, but it is pretty rare and very expensive. Switching from flat-sawn to rift-sawn to "mute the grain a little" is not the solution. Muting walnut's natural grain can be done through different finishing techniques, or completely eliminated by switching to cherry, maple, or birch.
Walnut Colored Cabinets
Okay, so after further reflection, it turns out you don't actually want walnut cabinets, rather just walnut-colored cabinets. Lovely, you'll probably save some money and a lot of headache trying to make walnut something it's not: consistent.
Pretty much any other domestic hardwood works very well to stain a walnut color: cherry, maple, birch, hickory, white or red oak, and alder. Here are a few favorites:
So How Do We Find The Right Walnut Stain Color?
If you're working with a cabinet shop, the way the process should work to find the perfect stain color should go like this:
They look at a couple inspiration photos to determine what type of wood and finish you're wanting.
Samples are then created to reflect the look you're after, be it stained maple or alder, or clearcoat-only walnut. You don't tell them a stain color or "recipe", and you certainly don't make your own samples (could you imagine if they asked you to make your own door sample? You would laugh and find another more accommodating shop to work with).
Once we get close to the right tone on smaller samples, we then make the final tweaks and apply to an entire door. This is the exact door and style you'll be using for your project.
If approved, that door then acts as the finish control for the entire project. When cabinets are delivered weeks later, do they look like the approved sample? Very simply, yes or no. This gets everyone's expectations aligned from the beginning.
If you're finishing your cabinets yourself, or working with lower-skilled painters (or unscrupulous builders that burden their customers with this process) we encourage you to check out General Finishes' YouTube channel. They are the best DIY / low-skilled finishes available: great durability and pretty easy to work with!
So, Should You Use Walnut For Your New Cabinets?
If you're good with the natural grain and tone variation of walnut, and/or have a large enough budget for a company that uses more-advanced finishing techniques to mute these inconsistencies, then yes! However, if you're simply wanting the walnut color, there are many less-expensive options available.
If you have any questions about specific stain colors or want to see other homeowners' walnut and walnut-colored cabinets, we invite you to join our community and ask away!
Having a partner early in the process to help identify red flags, walk you through what the process should look like, and help vet the other professionals on your project is exactly why we created this community. We understand that you're not just building a house, you're creating a home, and every detail has to be perfect.
Whether it's our blog or free expert advice in our Facebook group, we're here to help you every step of the way, Here's to empowered homeowners!